Fragments of Noir

Monday, 20 April 2026

Everything's Bad

Everything's bad Michael, everything. You can't escape it or fight it. You've got to get along with it. Deal with it, make terms.

Lady from Shanghai
Orson Welles
1948

Down by the Riverside motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Oh your old hometown's so far away
But inside your head there's a record that's playing

Hold On
(Brennan/Waits)
Tom Waits

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Sunday, 19 April 2026

Dark Femmes #28

Myung-Sook - The Housemaid (1960)

Rachael - Blade Runner

Sherry Peatty - The Killing

Natalie Bellsario - The Cooler

Racquel Serrano - Kneeling Goddess

Abigail Martin - Christmas Holiday

Bridget Gregory - Last Seduction

Annie Laurie Starr - Gun Crazy

Belle - Belle et Bete

Rita/Camilla Rhodes - Mulholland Drive

Sheila Bennet - Killer That Stalked New York

Carol Lakewood Morton - This World, Then the Fireworks

Marsha Mitchell - Storm Warning

Claire Quimby - Tension

Mona Demarkov - Romeo Bleeding

Carol Richman - Phantom Lady

Helene Desvallees - The Unfaithful Wife

Kathie Moffat - Out of the Past

A Rigged Game

The system worked because felons and misdemeanants plead guilty most of the time and did not file nuisance appeals routinely. The system worked because pre-breakdown jail time was doable. Criminals were pre-psychologized. They accepted authority. They knew they were lowlife scum because they saw it on TV and read it in the papers. They were locked into a rigged game. Authority usually won.

My Dark Places
James Ellroy
1996

Saturday, 18 April 2026

His Rope

Eddie Coyle is a small-time loser at the end of his rope, but the marvelous thing about Mitchum is that he doesn't play him as a groveling, uncourageous man. He imparts to the role a quiet dignity the character in the book lacked. I think Mitchum radiates a genuine presence. Above all, you can say about Mitchum that he is.

excerpt from
Robert Mitchum : The Last Celluloid Desperado
Grover Lewis
Rolling Stone - 1973

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Friends of Eddie Coyle
Peter Yates
1973

Lost Life

Lost Life
(Pepper)
Art Pepper

Friday, 17 April 2026

A State of Affairs

Chinatown connotes color and in a larger sense the hidden twoness of things. It is both a place and a state of affairs, part of Los Angeles and Los Angeles itself. At the end, we learn that Noah Cross "owns the police", that the cover-up Gittes detested in Chinatown extends all over. To paraphrase Marlowe's Mephistopheles ; Why this is Chinatown, nor am i out of it.